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Mozilla knows how to keep on the fast track. Just weeks after the Firefox 16 beta first showed, the finished version is ready and waiting. Surprises are few if you were an early adopter, although the update still has some welcome changes for the right audiences. Mozilla is most keen to talk about preliminary web app support for the Mozilla Marketplace, but you’ll also find device-specific additions like a Reader Mode for the Android flock and VoiceOver support automatically switched on for Macs. More responsive JavaScript and on-by-default Opus audio playback give existing surfers extra reasons to upgrade. Firefox 16 is immediately available through all the usual channels, so hit the relevant source link if you’re ready to live on the not-quite-bleeding edge.

Google has updated its Chrome browser with an interesting new feature for games. Version 22 now supports the Javascript command for Pointer Lock, which essentially gives it access to mouse look movements for first-person games.

It could be seen as another step towards Google’s long term plan to make the browser the default platform for PC gaming. It’s also worth pointing out that Firefox has had the same feature for a while now; indeed Google directs you to a Mozilla site to try it out. You should try it, it’s called Bananabread and surprisingly good.

Pointer Lock has also been present in older versions of Chrome (back to 16 I think) but had to be enabled in the hidden settings panel (enter ‘chrome://flags’ in the URL bar).

It’s been an awfully long time since there was much of interest to write about between browser releases, especially as Chrome and Firefox tend to release new versions every few weeks.

Mozilla has been seeding Firefox OS to eager developers for some time. However, we’ve largely been denied a peek at how the developer’s own take on a mobile app store will play out on an actual device. Some of that picture just filled out thanks to some images of the mobile Firefox Marketplace that have landed in Engadget’s hands. From what we’ve seen of the current store, it’s a significant break from the top-level storefront we saw back in the Boot to Gecko days, not to mention Mozilla Marketplace on the desktop. The deeper exploration shows a minimalist store that’s focused on quickly delving into individual categories rather than an abundance of highlighted apps. We’re not seeing any startling revelations — there’s only free apps visible in these early images, for example — but the gallery is proof that Mozilla is well on its way to fleshing out the core of its OS for a launch next year. Let’s just hope that the rest of the software moves at a similarly quick pace.

While most of its energy is focused on the XO-4 Touch, the One Laptop Per Child project is swinging into full gear for software, too. The project team has just posted an OS 12.1.0 update that sweetens the Sugar for at least present-day XO units. As of this latest revamp, text-to-speech is woven into the interface and vocalizes any selectable text — a big help for students that are more comfortable speaking their language than reading it. USB video output has been given its own lift through support for more ubiquitous DisplayLink adapters. If you’re looking for the majority of changes, however, they’re under-the-hood tweaks to bring the OLPC architecture up to snuff. Upgrades to GTK3+ and GNOME 3.4 help, but we’re primarily noticing a shift from Mozilla’s web engine to WebKit for browsing: although the OLPC crew may have been forced to swap code because of Mozilla’s policies on third-party apps, it’s promising a much faster and more Sugar-tinged web experience as part of the switch. While they’re not the same as getting an XO-3 tablet, the upgrades found at the source link are big enough that classrooms (and the occasional individual) will be glad they held on to that early XO model.

iOS users keen on Mozilla’s Firefox Home will have to find another browser syncing solution: the application has been retired. The app worked in conjunction with Firefox Sync, and was designed to give users access to their desktop history, open tabs and bookmarks on the go. Mozilla says the project “provided valuable insight and experience with the platform,” but ultimately decided its resources were better focused elsewhere. All isn’t lost, however — the company is making the source available on GitHub, encouraging users to tinker with the iOS Sync client Firefox Home was built on. Feel free to swim in the code yourself at the source link below.

Mozilla has been keeping to a tight schedule of having a completed Firefox release every five to six weeks, and it’s very much on track. The browser team’s Ehsan Akhgari has confirmed that a properly polished version of Firefox 15 should reach the download servers on August 29th. When it does arrive, the new release will primarily expand the silent updates that Windows users first saw in Firefox 12: future iterations on all platforms will install themselves in the background and should be truly ready to go the next time the browser starts. Beyond this deliberately subtle change, the finished version 15 upgrade should still support Opus audio as well as clamp down on out-of-control memory use from add-ons. We’re looking forward to not noticing the differences very shortly.

Twenty native speakers of Yucatec, Mexico’s most widely spoken Mayan tongue, met last Thursday to help bring the language to Google, Mozilla and Wikimedia projects. The event, dubbed Mozilla Translathon 2012, was organized to provide translations for Firefox, Google’s Endangered Languages Project, the WikiMedia software that powers Wikipedia and 500 crowdsourced articles, to boot. Finding the right words, however, can often be a tricky proposition. “There are words that can’t be translated,” Mozilla’s Mexico representative Julio Gómez told CNNMéxico. “In Maya, file doesn’t exist. Tab doesn’t exist.” Gómez continues to explain that the group may keep foreign words as-is, or find other terms to represent the same ideas. In addition to software localization, it’s believed that the effort could allow Maya speakers to “recover their identity and their cultural heritage,” according to Wikimedia México president Iván Martínez. If you’d like to peruse wiki articles in the indigenous language, check out the source links below.

Admittedly, the headline is designed to get your dander up. You’re in no immediate danger of a technologically-gifted thief plugging a couple of wires into your hotel door and making off with your sack of souvenirs from the Mall of America. But that’s not to say it’s impossible. Cody Brocious, who was recently brought on by Mozilla to work on Boot to Gecko, is giving a presentation at the annual Black Hat conference in Vegas where he demonstrates a method for cracking open keycard locks with a homemade $50 device. The hack only works on locks made by Onity at the moment, and real life testing with a reporter from Forbes only succeeded in opening one of three hotel doors. Still, with between four and five million Onity locks installed across the country (according to the company), that is a lot of vulnerable rooms. The attack is possible thanks to a DC jack on the underside of the lock that’s used to reprogram the doors. This provides direct access to the lock’s memory, which is also home to the numeric key required to release the latch — a key that is protected by what Brocious described as “weak encryption.” Ultimately the source code and design for the Arduino-based unlocker will be published online alongside a research paper explaining how these locks work and why they’re inherently insecure. The hope is that manufacturers will take notice and improve the security of their wares before the world’s ne’er-do-wells perfect Brocious’ technique.

Well, you can’t get Firefox OS on a phone yet, but you can fire it up on your computer and give the HTML5 and JavaScript mobile platform a try for yourself — right now! Mozilla has begun uploading nightly builds of the project formerly known as Boot to Gecko to its FTP servers. You can pull down a nicely wrapped package for Windows, Linux or OS X, or you download the source and build your own. It’s not as simple as installing an app, there is some configuring you’ll have to do, but the process is relatively simple and you’ll find complete instructions at the more coverage link. Obviously the OS is still in the very early stages and is can’t be considered representative of what the final product will be like. Still, it’s a nice glimpse at the progress Mozilla has made in just a single year of development. So, go get your own hands-on time with the next player on the mobile scene.

The changes in Firefox 14 may not be quite as immediately noticeable as those in the recently released Firefox 13, but they’re still fairly notable nonetheless. One of the biggest is Mozilla delivering on its promise to move to HTTPS for all Google search results and search suggestions, giving users a bit of added security. Mac OS X Lion users will also be glad to know that the full screen mode is now fully supported, and all users can also now expect better mouse performance in web-based games and other applications thanks to Mozilla’s implementation of the Pointer Lock API. As is the norm now, though, you’ll just have to wait another six weeks for the next release if a feature you’ve been waiting for didn’t make it into this one.